Apparently they’re born from drops of steel from London’s 2012 Olympic stadium, and their names are inspired by Much Wenlock in Shropshire and Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, two towns with Olympic history at their heart – ‘Much Wenlock Games’ predated the modern games, whilst Stoke Mandeville is the birthplace of the Paralympics, for whom ‘Mandeville’ is the new official mascot.

Based on a real life Dachshund named Cherie von Birkenhof, ‘Waldi’ – designed by creator of the Rotis font family, Otl Aicher – was the friendly face of Munich’s troubled 1972 games and the first official Olympic mascot.

Fascinatingly minimalist, 1976′s mascot – Amik – looked more like a Spectrum ZX in this image (the standard icon featured just one, red stripe) than a warm, friendly Olympic mascot. Symbolising ‘hard work’ and being native to Canada, the beaver was chosen as Montreal’s mascot

Russia’s mascot for the 1980 Moscow games was, of course, a bear… Misha, also known as Mishka, was designed by Victor Chizhikov – an illustrator of over 100 children’s books – and, having been used extensively throughout the games, was the first mascot of a sporting event to achieve large-scale commercial success as merchandise, even finding his way to a Japanese anime cartoon……

Interesting fact: Misha was the first Olympic mascot to have a girlfriend

‘Sam the Olympic Eagle’ appeared as a mascot for L.A’s 1984 games and was a typically American affair – strong in national identity, being a bald eagle (the national bird) and sharing a name with Uncle Sam, the famous personification of the USA.

Interesting fact: Sam was designed by C. Robert Moore, an artist for Disney

With a standard now seemingly in place for the Olympic mascot – child friendly characters with a huge cross-medium approach to use and merchandising – designer Kim Hyun’s creation for the 1988 Seoul Olympics was ‘Hodori’, a friendly Siberian tiger who appeared in various forms around the city and can still be seen today.

A cubist interpretation of a Catalan Sheepdog inspired by Picasso – it had to be Barcelona… and Cobi, designed by artist Javier Mariscal, is so very akin to the Catalan capital’s unique style. Massively successful, both in popularity and commercially, Cobi was seen in advertisements for the likes of Coca-Cola and Danone and even appeared in his own TV show.

There’s not much can be said for poor Izzy, the mascot for Atlanta’s 1996 games…. it seemed as though Cobi’s ten steps forward had been ignored in favour of an indeterminable ‘thing’, that during his lifetime underwent a number of changes – slimming to appear more ‘athletic’, growing a nose and losing the stars in his eyes amongst them. If Izzy did have one lasting impression however, it would be that – just like our own Wenlock and Mandeville – you no longer had to be, well… ‘anything at all’ to be an Olympic mascot.

Interesting fact: Izzy was the first computer generated mascot, and even had his own computer game – ‘Izzy’s Quest for the Olympic Rings’

The latest Olympic mascots are of course those from Beijing’s recent games – the Olympics that for us will always be remembered for Herzog & de Meuron’s spectacular ‘bird’s nest’ stadium. The Fuwa (literally meaning ‘good-luck dolls’), continued on from ‘Olly, Syd and Millie’ and ‘Athena and Phevos’ before them, in that they didn’t come alone – as previous Olympic mascots had done. The group of five – Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini – each had a rhyming two-syllable name, a traditional way of expressing affection for children in China.

The first syllable of each of their names – Beibei the Fish, Jingjing the Panda, Huanhuan the Olympic Flame, Yingying the Tibetan Antelope and Nini the Swallow – even came together to form a sentence, ‘Beijing huanying ni’ which means ‘Beijing welcomes you’…. demonstrating that the Olympic mascots had become more than just a symbol of the games, but an expression of a nation, its values and how it wanted to be seen by the rest of the watching world.

So, what of our own shiny, little drips of metal? Upon meeting the Olympic mascots of the last 40-odd years they seem decidedly more normal… you can see the designer’s thoughts – primarily in that during the games themselves, the mascots are used across so many mediums, and more so in today’s age…. Wenlock and Mandeville – like the controversial logo before them – will be used across television, online video, social media platforms (they, of course, already have their own Twitter accounts and Facebook pages) and most vitally – the lucrative merchandise market. Wenlock and Mandeville are hi-tech Olympic mascots!

Oh my Let the Games begin!!!!! We love the olympics!!!
Oh Auntie Eileen you did a Fabulous job informing us on the olympics!!!! and the backround is great too!!! We have a buzy day, we have to go into the city for eye exams and then we are supposed to go to see a Trenton Thunder game (we may go but we may not, supposed to have Thunderboomers again tonight too) Opening ceremonys tonight too!